The Room
by Takira
Summary: A year they spent together, and never revealed what had taken place between them; a brief perspective from the Room of Spirit and Time.


The Room

* * *

We came here for training and all the baka wants to do is talk. He follows me around wherever I go; either he is a puppy or he doesn't trust me, I shall for the moment assume the latter. He has already demonstrated a severe lack of faith in my capabilities, both mental and physical. Oddly, he gives no indication that he can outperform me...why, then, the silent criticism? I think he has heard too much about me from his fool mother. I hardly see how that is my fault.

A year alone and he wants to talk; as if two men could find enough to speak of to fill a year. I came here to train and he damned well better have come for the same reason. I'm not here to make up for his dead father, and I'm not here to pet and coddle him and tell him what he never heard from me...from that other me. I am here to train him to fight and to kill and to win. He will learn or he can call himself no Saiyajin.

I told him such, of course, since plainly he understands naught but explicit instructions. He took it as well as I've come to expect, which is to say, he tensed (I've yet to see the boy relax, come to think of it) and pressed his lips together in that way he has, like he's trying to keep something from coming out of his mouth. Does he want to spit, I wonder, or merely rail at me again that I'm heartless? Spitting, at least, I could counter in a meagerly satisfying manner, though I doubt it would raise his opinion of me. The amazing part is that he takes all of it so _personally_...

He tells me Gohan trained him. Well, that explains plenty. I offered him my dry condolences and he took offense, as he seems to do quite a bit when I'm around. It's a mystery to me why he insists on starting these conversations when he really should know by now that he won't like what I say. Perhaps he expects me to change into what he expected, or is merely morbidly fascinated that I do not. Meaningless to speculate; let him waste his time thinking over trivialities. I, for one, have work to do.

He can fight well enough for a half-breed; pity the boy doesn't know how to use his head for anything but growing oddly-colored hair. He meets physical challenges head-on, but the moment I pose him with a more critical test of my own devising, he loses control and starts yelling again, or worse, gives me that desperate-child look of his; as though I were responsible for his world collapsing around him. Bah...these are not my problems. If the boy were stronger, he'd be better capable of handling his situation. I'd train him as I was trained except that I suspect it would break him.

I give him everything I can: the benefit of my knowledge, of my skill in sparring...and I give him other things, of course. I imagine I can toughen him up at least somewhat before we leave; obviously Bulma is as much an idiot in his timeline as in mine and has babied the child. He feels entirely too much. The irritating thing is, most of what he feels seems to stem from me. The way he acts, his father must have been some pure-hearted hero; small wonder the poor bastard got himself killed. Never get the boy started on that subject, though. Already he's sworn passionately to avenge my death.

...MY death.

I clarified _that_ right away, of course. Genealogy aside, I'd never laid eyes on him before he arrived here; I'm hardly his father. Bulma has her own tiny version of him, which is quite repugnant enough, especially after she had the gall to remove his tail. He looks like a small fat ningen. The one I train with now looks like a tall slim ningen. I see nothing of me in either but in the shape of the elder's eyes.

Need I say how freakish it is to see blue in Saiyajin eyes? The hair was ridiculous enough. No wonder he stares at me; he's never seen a real Saiyajin before. He sure as hell doesn't understand what it means to be one.

That may be the sole reason I waste my time with him. Kakarotto never understood what he was, and thus Gohan shows no Saiyajin inclinations at all (I do not, however, count that as much of a loss). I alone understand the fundamentals of our being, and it is now my weary duty to attempt to impress them upon a mind shaped purely as that of a ningen--all this with the boy eyeing me like a demon and accepting only the most literal interpretations of what I tell him. Considering his parentage, it is a source of constant surprise to me that he is so perpetually dense. Granted, Bulma only knew how to deal with mechanical things; she lacks as much common sense as he does. Damnable consequence, that he should take after his mother in that respect as well. I begin to wonder if I donated any genes at all apart from the crucial Y chromosome...

He mentioned Cell the other day and apparently I looked surprised; well, hell, how many months have we been trapped in here away from that debacle? A mere door-width away, yes, but even so--he accused me of having lost sight of our goal and found that, for some reason, utterly appalling. I explained quite patiently (once I'd put him in his place) that I had lost sight of nothing: I had come here to train, and train hard. Thus far I had done nothing else. How does that constitute a lack of direction?

He wonders how I can fight "without purpose," as if I didn't have one (perhaps he is learning after all; he comes closer and closer to actually insulting me as our time here passes, but I sense he is afraid of that, too...what _am_ I to do with the boy?). Saiyajin eyes, Saiyajin soul--I can see it, sometimes, when he fights me--and yet he does not understand what it is to fight its own sake.

Bulma and Gohan ruined him, I can see that much. They've taken something potentially strong and sapped the true source of its power, left it utterly without foundation. He told me that he had not been able to transform until he saw Gohan dead; I mentioned in passing that I'd always thought Kakarotto's brat would do the most good that way. I meant surprisingly little by it, but the way he reacted one would have thought I'd hawked and spit on the man's corpse. I'd known he would be that way about it, predictable as he is; he has a remarkable talent for displaying his weaknesses in everything he does: the way he talks, bears himself, even in the way he fights. He knows no other method but desperation, despite my repeated reminders that desperation is the worst possible way to gain strength. He doesn't seem to realize that I speak from experience; he can't look beyond his own misery or the idea of me as a potential source of it.

He says he wants to talk.

I wonder when he will listen.

* * *


End file.
